Tag: Everyday life

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dear diary ~ all’s well

Many thanks for all your lovely comments I only wish I had a bit more time to read and comment as I used to on the blogs I read. Everytime I think I might have some spare time looming on the horizon it is like that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – never quite within my grasp!

Over the last few weeks I thought I would never be able to say all’s well again. I had such a bad virus that kept coming and going and I had almost learnt to live with it. I have also had to have a few medical tests and scans recently (nothing to do with the virus) which had to be cancelled due to illness and rearranged but at last I have worked through all of them and I am relieved just to have a week without any appointments.

Last Monday we had a drive up to north Yorkshire to visit my mum. She has been a little bit less demanding over the last two weeks…in fact she is quite calm at the moment for which I am really grateful and it has helped reduce both my stress levels and blood pressure.

We spent about four hours with her and I can’t think of anything that she complained about, which is unusual. The TV remote was working, the carers have been on time for the evening call at 6 o’clock to get her to bed and they have all been the carers she likes…so no grumbles which made a pleasant change and a much more pleasant visit.

Last week she was most thoroughly told off by the senior wound control person who went to see her and discuss the options for the rodent ulcer on her leg which is ‘festering’ badly and not far from becoming gangrenous. She has been turning away the district nurses who dress her leg and won’t let them put the necessary dressings on and if they do get them on she removes them but to be fair the sticky edging to the plasters do make her skin sore. The nurses want to put compression stockings on as a way to help the healing process but mum would not hear of it – she says she would not be able to get her shoes on and they would look so awful when she goes out. Bearing in mind she wears trousers all the time now and can only go out when my sister takes her to the local park in the wheelchair or occasionally to a nearby Costa or Pizza Express for a pizza no-one can fully understand her reluctance to wearing the stockings. Anyway she was told by the wound control person in no uncertain terms that if she did not comply with the treatment then she would eventually be taken into hospital, probably with sepsis, and could lose her leg or not even come out again – it was up to her now.

Harsh I know…. but it has done the trick and she didn’t mention her leg at all yesterday – normally she would say how sore it was and throbbing and how awful all the nurses are and that they have no idea what they are doing and it is them making it worse, not the fact that she leaves the wound exposed and allows it to get more infected. So now it is all dressed and wrapped and she hasn’t complained once. Result.

I don’t know about where you all live but here we have barely had a day without rain at some point and going in the garden to do some jobs has not been possible. I have managed one day so far and had a bit of a tidy up. Surprisingly, even with the bad weather it is full of colour with all the tulips, forget-me-nots and wallflowers and the amalancier is looking magnificent in full bloom.

On Easter Sunday we had all the family to tea and held an Easter egg hunt in our back garden…. in the cold although… the children didn’t seem to notice the wind chill whilst busy trying to find the hidden eggs. Master Freddie made these cute Easter baskets for us all.

On Easter Monday we went with all four grandchildren and their mums and dads to RHS Harlow Carr – even their garden was suffering from the cold and wet with many areas of the garden waterlogged.

Whilst the weather has been so bad I have continued with the major decluttering project – some things are hard to reduce in number – these little china mugs for instance – I did get rid of a couple and kept the ones in the photo. I have made a few sales already on Ebay – listing items can take such a long time… taking photos and then giving a detailed description and I find selecting the right postage a real pain with all the different parcel sizes and weights, but well worth it when our unwanted items go off to good homes and I get a little bit of money for our holiday fund.

I had to make a menu plan at the begining of this week that would leave us with an empty fridge by the time we leave for Scotland, so I had to plan carefully and only shop for the absolute necessary items to make a meal. The pantry is well stocked – perhaps a little too well stocked, but I had to buy some fresh fruit and veg to get us through the week. Over the last few weeks my stomach has not been good since the virus and the meals have been just a little of what I thought I could manage…..and that was mainly a baked potato – not the most healthy diet in the world – but thankfully all is back to normal again so curries, nut loaf and pasta bakes are back on the menu.

I am reading three quite different books at the moment, but the one I can’t put down is the Persephone book ‘The Village’ by Margharita Laski – I bought it with my Amazon voucher from Christmas and I really have to stop myself reading late into the night. The book about the Brontes was gift and How to Live is from my local library full of good advice, I just wish I could have read it years ago as the latest research on health and chronic disease is quite enlightening. I do try and implement gradual changes to my diet but isn’t the healthy choice often the more expensive. Being vegetarian we have always eaten plenty of fruit and veg but it is far more expensive now than ever.

Whilst in Sainsbury’s I picked up the May issue of Gardener’s World which has the 2 for 1 card. I was astonished to find it is now £9.50 a copy and the free packets of seeds that come with this issue has been reduced down to four, though they are all seeds that I will grow – Zinnias have become a firm favourite and I love the jewel colours in late summer.

My next project when I return from Scotland will be helping my daughter arrange the Christening for baby Chocolate – how difficult can that be? Well let me tell you it can be difficult. We live in a parish of 4 churches, but only one vicar. One church has no heating, since the boiler broke over 3 years ago, we did have Master Freddie’s Christening there one November and yes it was cold – we took a hot water bottle for my mum. Another church (the preferred one by the village hall that we would like to hire) had a Christening last week and part of the ceiling fell down and we are waiting to know if it will be repaired, the other two have services much earlier at 9.30am (rather than the 11.15am of the others) which is quite early for those relatives that live a long way off and also for preparing the Christening tea beforehand. The dates offered are near the end of May or end of October – neither being that good for us – May is a bit too soon to organise and October a bit too late in the year….but we were told there is a possibility of a date in August and that would be ideal.

Is it just me or is life getting far more complicated and complex than ever before?

Hope you have a brilliant weekend with plenty of sunshine and welcome to my new readers – it would be good if you leave a comment without completing the form if you could put your name at the end of your comment so other readers know who you are.

Bye for now x

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dear diary ~ the best laid plans…

……always seem to go wrong for us!

By last Sunday morning my daughter had caught the virus from her husband and the baby – it was a toss up which one of them felt worse. We had Master Freddie for the day to give them chance to rest and he was as good as gold. It was far too cold / wet / damp to go anywhere so we settled down with the box of Lego and then played a game of Peppa Pig Monopoly (still the favourite with all the grandchildren). By mid afternoon I knew I had succumbed to the virus but managed to keep going until tea-time and then had to go and lay my head down leaving DH to cook his tea and take him home. I really haven’t felt well since.

By the next day on Monday tea-time DH was also unwell, he thought he wasn’t doing too badly but has taken a turn for the worse today. This really is a vicious virus, the baby is still unwell and it is over a week now and his temperature keeps dipping and diving reaching 40C at times and then normal again at others. Of course there is no doctor available because he hasn’t got a rash or had a fit! When my daughters were babies we always received a visit from our doctor if they were poorly. How times have changed.

This is the first day I have been able to have a shower – it was a challenge as I am so light headed all the time and find it difficult to stand for any length of time without passing out – both my daughter and son-in-law are having the same problem so I think it is just the nature of the virus. I have also got stabbing pains in my bones and muscles and feel generally quite weak. All we can do is sit it out.

It was going to be a busy week for us trying to do some of the household tasks like cleaning the oven (which is now long overdue). All our plans for the jobs around the house have had to be postponed and all the appointments cancelled. I just hope we improve by next week. Mum is frantically calling me a lot asking how I am, but don’t be deceived, this is not really to know if I am feeling better but if I am feeling better enough to go up and see her this Sunday because my sister is away again this weekend.

I would have to be in hospital for her to consider I might not feel well enough to visit…..and at the moment I really don’t and this pressure is not helping as I cannot relax. DH took a call the other night after she left a series of voicemail messages sobbing that my sister had told her we were never going to go and visit her ever again. What my sister actually said was that we may not get up anytime soon.

Last time I couldn’t go to visit when my sister was away she had a series of tamtrums everyday with the carers – sobbing, screaming shouting and throwing things – she is a most difficult patient and wears them all out….it is exasperating. I live in fear that one day the care agency will say they are not prepared to take all this abuse anymore and we will have to find another agency. I am sure other people out there are going through a similar experience with an elderly parent but I feel so alone in all this as there is no one to ask for advice on how to deal with all this.

Anyway enough of my problems – I know life will look better when I feel better and a good moan can be very cathartic – just ignore me!

I hope everyone is managing to keep well and maybe there is a hint of good weather coming along as I know everyone will be itching to go out into their gardens – me as well. It really has been a long gloomy winter.

Take care x

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dear diary :: getting back into the swing

Home again and back to normal daily life and all that entails. Already there have been ups and downs in the couple of weeks we have been at home. Mum has had another urine infection – they make her say and do the oddest things as these infections disturb the brain. It is generally known now that a lot of the ‘dementia’ in elderly people is actually a lack of fluids but even though they are told to drink more they don’t as it means more trips to the toilet. For mum this is not easy as her mobility is so reduced she is on the verge now of not being able to walk at all.

We had a trip up to see her last Sunday after having Little L and Sweetie to stay on Friday and Saturday night. As they left we jumped in the car to drive the 90 miles to see mum – she hates being alone on a Sunday and my sister was away for a rest (though you can hardly call it being on her own as the carers go in 4 times a day).

I have started a course of acupuncture to see if it might help my ear problems and the peripheral nerve damage in my legs and feet from the ruptured disc I had over a year ago. I have never minded needles and quite frankly the doctors are at a loss so I will have a go at anything.

Last Monday we woke to a phone call from my younger daughter who, if you have been following my blog may remember, we helped to buy a new used car – the one that had a burst tyre on the motorway 14 minutes later. Perry’s in Rotherham have been very good and sent a cheque to her for the replacement tyre and we are hopeful we might recover some of the money for the recovery charge we paid to get her off the motorway. Anyway back to the phone call….”mum, the car is at the garage again”, “oh no” I said, ” what has happened this time?”…….. “a taxi driver came out of his driveway on the school run and straight into me and then drove away – I am waiting for the police”.

Daughter, Little L and Sweetie were shocked but OK, my daughter is now having to have physio because of bad whiplash.. the taxi driver eventually came back to the scene after his neighbour, who had seen the crash, rang him to tell him to come back. He has had a similar accident before coming out of his drive. Obviously he doesn’t have great timing and luckily daughter was not going fast. The car is not quite a write off but badly crumpled. Such
a shame.

On Wednesday it was such a beautiful sunny day we used our free NT coupon and went to Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire for the day. It must be over 30 years since we last visited and there is now a huge car park which was almost full and a new visitor centre. When we previously went you parked almost outside the door in the car park that had all of about 10 cars in it and the cafe was in one of the old kitchens. It was very interesting as the volunteers had time to chat and tell us quite a bit of the history and odd quirks of the place.

The little book on the left was found hidden behind one of the wooden panels in the dining room. There are never as many little artefacts of this nature in a place of this date as you find in later Georgian and Victorian properties so this was quite unusual.

We had arranged to go to help my elder daughter this week, who lives nearby, with her young baby but unfortunately baby Chocolate was unwell with a virus and a high temperature at the same time as her husband was also ill in bed. We could only help wash dishes and do a few household chores and nurse the baby to give mum a break as no way was he being put down in his cot – all he really wanted was to snuggle up with his mum. He is no better today so we will have Master Freddie here tomorrow to help out. I did have plans but of course I can put them aside.

I seem to have got quite a few unfinished decluttering jobs on the go now as it has been quite a broken up week one way or another. I am still wading through old paperwork and managed to scan on to the computer a lot of documents that I feel need keeping. I know you should not keep things ‘just in case’ but we have been saved a few times by hanging on to things. When we had the flood we could produce every receipt and got a good price for our contents, when there was all the endowment policy scandal we could produce plenty of evidence and more recently when the Skipton B.S. failed to transfer our ISA savings we could tell them the day and almost exact time that we had dropped the transfer request forms (that they claim they had not received) into the branch because I had kept the dental card machine receipt which showed the date and time we paid and the appointment was prior to us dropping in the forms. With each of these issues there has been a lot of money at stake that we might have missed out on if I wasn’t quite as diligent at keeping old paperwork.

It is so easy to keep a record digitally and I can then archive all these documents onto a memory stick. I hope I will never need to look back at them but you never know!

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dear diary ~ space clearing

It’s been a while, it’s also been quite frantic here and as usual it’s been stressful and joyful in equal quantities….well almost, perhaps a little more on the stress and a little less of the joy!

I just thought I would pop by as I can’t believe it is the latter part of February already and I have only completed a few tasks on my long, long to do list. I decided that the beginning of the new year called for a major declutter in our house to regain some lost space. I intend for this mad clear out to also include the loft, shed and garage….though at the moment it is far too cold to be in any of those places for any length of time.

I am hoping it is a case of it will get worse before it gets better as the whole house is in a mess now with piles everywhere destined for charity or recycle or a friend or craft group. Hardly anything is rubbish, very little has gone in the bin – it just needs rehoming…. either at my house or hopefully someone elses.

As I go through every drawer and cupboard, every box and bookshelf I am finding that as I remove more and more I am loving the space and it is becoming much easier to part with things.

After Christmas I sorted through all the decorations before I packed them away and took a bag full down to the charity shop – I have found as time goes on I am putting out fewer and fewer decorations each year.

I did have a box full of lovely cards that friends have handmade for me over the years – I picked out the best and then photographed the remainder before putting them in the recycle. Such a shame but I can’t keep everything.

Christmas seems a long time ago now. We had a large family gathering at my sister’s house for Christmas dinner and we managed to get my mum there too though the one little step at the front door was quite a challenge for her.

The grandchildren were busy before Christmas making their traditional place name cards which were wonderfully decorated and have now gone into my keepers box with the others.

I even managed to make a few cards myself and had a bit of a production line going one day. Thank heavens for rubber stamps as they are quick and easy to use when I run out of time to do my own lino cut.

Since Christmas it hasn’t been all work and no play…. during January we celebrated Master Freddie’s 5th birthday (at one of those ear splitting play gyms with a party room) and my mum’s 98th birthday – a much quieter affair. The weekend after her birthday my sister and her husband took mum out to a posh hotel for a meal during which mum suddenly stopped eating and went unconscious at the table – her head slumped but her eyes remained wide open staring ahead and they could not get a flicker of a response from her for over 10 minutes, it was only the fact that they could detect a faint pulse that they knew she hadn’t actually died! During this time my sister got reception to call for help – they wouldn’t send an ambulance – obviously not thought urgent enough but passed her over to a 111 person who asked my sister a load of questions to establish mums condition.

Eventually, mum finally rowsed and started talking as if nothing had happened and finished her meal – she didn’t even realise anything had happened. The 111 person then ended the call as they thought she sounded OK and said they would refer her to her GP who did actually go and see her next day and take some blood tests. The results showed a blood abnormality but the GP said they would not do anything because of her age – so far she is a write off then and so far no-one knows why she went unconscious for so long!

For her birthday I bought her one of those large button TV remote controls as she was having difficulty changing the channels with the tiny buttons on hers and was always pressing the wrong thing. She had been intent on getting a new TV just to get a different remote (her mind works in a mysterious way these days) even though I told her it would not be any different to what she already had. The new remote has been wonderful – it has fewer buttons for her to press so she can’t press something she didn’t intend to and end up on the shopping channel or mute it by accident and best of all she doesn’t get it muddled up with the telephone anymore either and try to call me on it.

So far this month we have spent a good deal of time researching a new but used car for my daughter. It is unknown territory for us as we have only been used to new ones – DH had a company car and we always saved up to buy my small car outright and traded in the older one in part exchange. The big question was who do you trust …..we do not know much about cars to buy at one of these auction sites or from a private individual so we resorted to a local Kia dealer as that was the make she wanted with the 7 year warranty….or as in her case the remaining years of a 7 year warranty.

After two days of trawling websites and a spreadsheet to capture all the information we fnally found one that ticked all the boxes at Perry’s in Rotherham. It was a 2020 reg with only 11,000 miles and one owner. It looked like new with good quality Michelin tyres hardly worn. We took her and the girls down last Saturday to pick it up. It is a long story but she had only driven it for 14 minutes along the M1 northbound when we got a call from her saying mum I have broken down!!!!

It was no joke.

Whilst driving the tyre pressure sensor suddenly came on the dashboard at the same time as the rear passenger side tyre blew and went completely flat. She couldn’t even make it to the next exit to get off the motorway.

Of course she rang her breakdown company but they had failed to mention that by switching the cover from her old car to the new one there was no immediate cover and it would not kick in until the next day.

Perry’s in Rotherham could not recover the car but they gave me a number to ring for a local recovery man. Imran came to the rescue – he was so lovely and got my daughters car on his breakdown truck and off the motorway so he could swap the wheel for the emergency one in the boot – that was the first expense of £200.

The next day my daughter got the tyre examined at our local Halfords – it had a few holes in it and one still had a visible nail head embeded in it. Halfords showed her where a nail must have popped out when she was driving and had been the cause of the sudden flat. On examination it was found that the tyre had already had a repair in the past so it had to be a new one – another expense of £99 ….luckily only the one was needed as the other rear tyre was like new.

It is yet another mystery as my daughter did not notice anything on the road at the time and had only been on a normal A road before getting onto the motorway – she had not been down any rough tracks. Once my daughter is back from her holiday Perry’s are going to look in to it but as it is a punctured tyre I expect there will be no come back on them.

We are now in Scotland to rest and recover for a few days and where I can plot and plan for more space clearing when I get home. I have brought some bits and pieces to do up here along with my knitting in the hope of finishing baby Chocolates little hooded jacket.

I hope everyone is well and enjoying 2024 – many apologies to anyone coming over on the 15th for the ScrapHappy Challenge I will try my best to show something for March, and welcome to new readers – as you will have realised by now my blog posts are a bit hit and miss!

How is your new year going so far this year?